


Not To Die

by LananiA3O



Category: Darksiders (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Memorials, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, Spoilers for Darksiders III, and canonical genocide, h/c, mention of dead pets, post Darksiders III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-25 14:15:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19747402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Following their escape from Haven, Fury gets into a routine of patrolling humanity's new sanctuary. What seems like a simple task to Fury, quickly becomes a lesson in reflection about herself and her circumstances.





	Not To Die

**Author's Note:**

> So this is one of those stories that I like to call "productive writer's block". Did I have a ton of ideas for this story? Hell yes. Could I have written literally anything else before this? Nope. I swear, I tried working on my on-going WIPs first, but this idea here just wouldn't leave me alone, so this one-shot has to come first. Sorry.
> 
> Also, it's 2.30 in the morning and I probably missed a number of typos in this. Sorry.

Clack. Clack. Click. Clack. Clack. Click.

Fury sighed. The rhythm was becoming familiar, both in its repetitiveness and in its infinite emptiness. She didn’t know what was more worrisome: that she had become so accustomed to these halls that she could tell the material of the ground she walked on from the sound her heels made, or that she had grown so used to the echoes that it almost seemed like she wasn’t alone.

Almost.

Fury was no fool. She knew these halls. She had been walking them for thirty days now, had been living surrounded—no, _swarmed_ —by humans for just as long and she knew, as a matter of fact, that she was alone in this part of Sanctuary.

Of course the humans had dubbed this place ‘Sanctuary’. _Of course_ they had.

She swallowed back the words ‘hairless simians’—terminology that she had been actively trying to strike from her vocabulary since stepping through the reflecting pool in Haven—and settled on ‘simple fools’ instead.

n

“Simple fools.”

Yes. That sounded about right. Fury finished her round of this particular hallway after exactly a thousand paces, as always, and walked out onto the balcony to her left.

Here the ground was earth and stone and root, and it swallowed the sound of her heels entirely. She could feel her feet sink, just about a toe deep, but somehow they came back clean every time. Here, the soil did not stick, even though it was kept moist by an elaborate irrigation system that might have taken ordinary architects months to construct.

Fury had the distinct suspicion that the makers had likely done it in days.

The tree that stood in the center of the balcony was in full bloom as always, a colorful patch of white and purple blossoms surrounded by a thousand shades of green. She wondered, albeit briefly, why the humans never came here. After all, they had seemed incredibly fond of the combination of greenery and stone in every other part of Sanctuary. The thought stuck in her head for about three seconds, before making way for the mild irritation that grew inside her every time she bothered to look outside.

There was nothing there. Well, not exactly nothing. There was an ocean, but its blue expanse stretched on as far as Fury could see. Exploring the entire structure had been the very first thing she had done upon her arrival here and everywhere she had looked there was water, water, water and more water. Sanctuary was an island. A very large island, which floated high above the waves, but an island nonetheless. She could see other floating islands far off in the distance, but they were specks of dirt in the clouds and she was still stuck here. It was only a matter of time until she would be bored to death here, just as she had been on the world she had been confined to in between missions from the Council. Only this time she did not—

No. She was not going there. Not again.

Fury clenched her teeth and returned to her patrol. There were another nine towers to check after all.

***

Clack. Clack. Click. Clack. Clack. Click.

Fury scoffed. She would kill for something to do. Something exciting. Anything.

Forty days had passed since their arrival in Sanctuary and though they had not been without change, they had been mostly uneventful for Fury. Not so much for the humans.

They had finally worked out what the amulet was for, although it had been by pure accident. At first, Fury had not trusted any of them to hold a trinket with enough power to make a maker wonder and tempt them to use it for their purposes, but eventually the choice had been made for her. It had been Gloria of course, who had snatched the amulet from her. Gloria, who had reacted to the realization that she was going to have a fatherless child in this strange new place that they had been transported to—another development that Fury was looking forward to ignoring for as long as feasibly possible—by deciding that matters could hardly get any worse or more complicated for her. In the end, the amulet had not harmed her. On the contrary.

Gloria had spoken of a whisper at first. A whisper that settled in her head and should have been annoying in its permanence, yet somehow barely registered. Like white noise. It had been followed by a feeling of warmth, even when the winds were cold, but it wasn’t until Gloria had effortlessly gone without food or water or sleep for six days long after handing the amulet back that Fury realized what had happened to her. The Lord of Hollows had been hollowing angels and demons for centuries, distilling immortality.

It was the greatest gift any creature in the universe could have bestowed upon another.

Of course, exploring just how far this new-found resistance against the more natural causes of death among humans went had quickly become something almost akin to a sport among the humans under her protection.

Sometimes Fury wondered if they had not been better left to their own devices at Eden.

Strangely enough, immortality had done little to upset humanity’s daily routines. Gloria claimed it was a matter of habit and comfort. That there was a feeling of safety in repeating rituals that had once been necessary self-care. Fury found her reasoning utterly baffling. It seemed like an utter waste of time and energy and resources to maintain patterns that were no longer necessary, to consume food that was no longer needed for sustenance or sleep when the body did not need rest. As far as Fury was concerned, only one good thing had come of it.

Humanity still stayed away from the Midnight Tower.

 _It is a bit of a misnomer_ , Fury thought to herself, as she stepped out onto the balcony once more. True, this was the only tower which was never fully bathed in light from at least one of this world’s four suns, however it was nowhere near as dark or as bleak as the name suggested. The tree was still in full bloom, the garden was still green—

The wall opposing the balcony was no longer flawless, shining white marble.

Fury squinted at the structure. A large arch roughly the size of a human had been etched into the stone and while Sanctuary itself was a peculiar mix of angelic love for spires and the makers’ love for circular designs, it still felt out of place. She would have to ask the humans if this had been their work. If not...

Fury smiled.

If not, she might actually have something to do for a change.

***

clack. clack. click. clack. clack. click.

Fury listened for the echoes, but today, they were swallowed by the same constant rush and pattering of the rain outside that also muffled her steps.

It was a welcome change from the usual weather, but it also lowered visibility, both outside and inside Sanctuary. There were no suns today. Only thick, grey, clouds illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning in the distance.

It was thanks to one of those flashes that she saw the shadow long before she heard the hacking of metal on stone. Fury’s hand curled around Scorn, even as the logical part of her brain reminded her that it was more likely to be one of the humans than an intruder. It had been fifty days, after all, and no-one had found them yet.

Unfortunately, logic won. _Pity._ She was aching for a good fight. Fury clenched her teeth against the disappointment that threatened to spill from her mouth and stepped closer.

It was Lewis, one of the last humans she had rescued before facing Pride, and one of only two of them with red hair. It looked downright out of place amidst the grey and white of the stone and the rain. The only other thing on the balcony that was equally colorful were the blossoms on the tree.

“Lewis.”

“Hey there, Fury!” If the rain was bothering him, Lewis didn’t show it. Instead, he gave her a quick smile before continuing his work on the arch. It was starting to have actual depth to it now, but its function still escaped Fury. “How’s patrol?”

“Fine...” Fury frowned. The purpose of small-talk had always eluded her. The more she thought about it, the more she wished Strife had watched over humanity while she had stayed behind to help the makers. She could think of at least a dozen reasons why he was more suited to the task and this was only the least of them.

She was going to have to punch him in the face next time she saw him.

“What—” The sentence died on her tongue. This was a bad idea. Granted, Lewis was not _the_ chattiest of humans, but that wasn’t saying much. Any question she could even think of asking was going to get her a long explanation and probably at least two or three attempts to turn it into an actual conversation.

Thankfully, it was this world itself that gave her an out.

The change was subtle and probably easily missed by someone as young to the universe as Lewis, but for Fury, it instantly made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. More than usual anyway. It was the pressure of the atmosphere around her that had shifted ever so slightly, and the sudden, chilly draft she felt confirmed her suspicions.

“That thunderstorm will be here in a minute. Get inside. Now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The fact that his accent made it sound like ‘yes, mom’ was hardly lost on her. Fury scoffed and continued her patrol.

***

Clack. Clack. Click. Clack. Clack. Click.

 _There was more to it than immortality, after all._ Fury didn’t know why that thought even surprised her, but it did. Sixty days in and they had cracked a new layer of the stone sigil. It was not just a fountain of immortality, but also a fountain of knowledge. Everything any of the angels and demons and humans who had ever sacrificed their souls to the Lord of Hollows had ever known. It was unbelievably vast, surprisingly impressive, and almost entirely a blessing.

That was until Gloria had unlocked one of the oldest human memories trapped in the stone: a first-hand-account of the attack on Eden.

Fury sighed.

It shouldn’t have mattered what they had seen in that amulet. After all, she was humanity’s protector, not its nursemaid. To her great surprise, they had actually proven to be quite capable of forming a new societal structure and using the amulet responsibly, or at least as responsibly as anyone so new to the universe could use an artifact containing the essence of literally thousands of immortal souls. Her role in this was not one that required affection, only trust.

And yet, the sudden wave of... well, it had not quite been hostility... more something like leeriness, which had greeted her after knowledge of Eden had been shared, had been like a slap in the face, like a bucket of cold water thrown out over her head.

Even worse had been Gloria’s offer of... talking about it.

Eden was done. It was over. The less said about it, the better.

Fury paused, took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the balcony.

The balcony which was not empty for once. As a matter of fact, if Fury wasn’t mistaken, there were exactly fifty eyes looking at her.

Well, forty-eight. To her right, Lewis was at work on the wall again.

She didn’t even glance at it as she passed by and continued onward to the next tower.

***

clack. clack. click. clack. clack. BOOM. click.

The storms had returned and they had been raging for four days now, only this time the lightning had come accompanied with thunder so loud it made her feel like her ears were about to crack in half. The rain was relentless. The wind was worse.

Yet somehow, Lewis was there once again, taking a chisel to the stone.

Fury shook her head and continued onward without sparing him another glance.

Humans truly were an insane species.

***

Clack. ... Clack. ... Click. ... Clack. ... Clack. ... Click.

Fury cursed under her breath as she dragged herself along her usual patrol route. Everything hurt.

She should have known that something was bound to go wrong soon. Humanity had zero experience dealing with magic after all. Even something as simple as using a life shard to heal injuries had been beyond them at first. Some had bothered to try to learn the basics from the makers of Haven, but those lessons had only carried them so far.

The hollow sigil had carried them much, MUCH father. Too far.

 _At least they didn’t try necromancy first_ , Fury thought with her teeth still clenched every step of the way. True, botching telekinesis was not fun and it had resulted in Fury cracking every single rib in her torso when she had tried to mitigate the damage, but this could have been much, much worse if they had chosen... well, practically any other type of magic. Now she could only hope that they had learned their lesson.

And that all her broken bones would be healed by the time somebody else tried to bite off more than they could chew.

Today, the balcony garden was empty and Fury was grateful for that. She was already late on today’s patrol. Sitting down for five minutes was not going to kill her.

 _Sitting down..._ The thought made her want to laugh. The sharp ache in her torso stopped her. What would her brothers think if they could see her now? Fury, the one who always rushed ahead, who usually couldn’t be bothered to enjoy the scenery for even a minute, who almost certainly would never admit her pain when she was hurt.

_What would they say if they could see me now, sitting down to catch my breath and not even complaining about it?_

She could see it pretty clearly, actually. She could see War standing there, tall and mum as a tower of stone, shooting her a puzzled glance that said more than a hundred words. She could see Death standing off to the side, turned away just enough to look like he didn’t care, but enough to keep an eye on her, muttering about the foolishness of his younger siblings. She could see Strife sitting down on the bench next to her, teasing her about her unusual behavior with one sharp jab and veiled insult after another, trying to catch the moment that no-one was looking so he could sneak in a ‘seriously, though, are you gonna be ok, sis?’, just short enough to make her think she had only imagined it.

Her brothers were idiots.

Fury... missed them.

Curse Ulthane and his ilk. Humanity was starting to rub off on her.

***

Clack. Clack. Click. ... Clack. Clack. Click.

Ninety days. Ninety days on this confounding planet and to this day Fury had not figured out whether there was any rhyme or reason to the weather. Today, some strange mist had rolled up the island and shrouded everything in silvery white. It was cold, it was damp, and it was so dense that she could hardly see the ground at her feet. That alone was as good a reason as any to be more careful on patrol. In the unlikely event that some intruder had found Sanctuary, this weather would give them perfect cover.

It was because of the fog that she almost missed the light to her right. It was so muted, so rolled up in mist and shadow, that it could have passed for a trick of her mind, had she not known for sure that there was nothing there but a wall.

Well, a wall with an arch and some candles someone had put there.

_Why candles, though?_

Fury took one quick stride along the edge of the balcony to ensure that there was no-one there and returned to the wall once more.

On closer inspection—literally and figuratively—it was clear that Lewis had been hard at work every single day. The arch was a deep recess now and it made the section it carved out appear to be a separate slab of stone, rather than part of the wall. At its feet, not just one or two, but dozens of candles littered the ground. Apparently, someone had mastered a minor fire spell, for the sparks burned seemingly independent of the moisture in their surroundings and without the use of wax. They were simply there, little glows of soft orange, trapped in fist-sized domes of glass.

In between them, the floor was covered with flowers and it didn’t take Fury long to recognize them. The white and purple of the tree was unmistakable. Some of them were loose. Some were woven into wreaths. If there was any pattern to the arrangement, Fury could not see it.

Above the flowers and the candles, five symbols had been carved in a neat row into the bottom quarter of the stone. A fish with a cross in it. A six-pointed star. A sickle moon with a single star. A wheel with eight spokes. A second wheel, swirling half-black, half-white. They seemed familiar, although she could not tell why and how. There was a nagging feeling in the back of her head like she really ought to know better, having spent enough time with humanity already to have learned their basic routines, but she ignored it. What did it matter any—

Fury’s gaze went higher and froze her in place as the realization hit her.

In the top three quarters, written neatly and in graceful font, as if the words had been written in ink with a quill rather than carved with a chisel, stood the words that left no doubt as to the purpose of this project in four tidy lines.

TO LIVE

IN THE HEARTS

OF THOSE WE LOVE

IS NOT TO DIE

...

This was a memorial. The closest thing to a grave humanity would ever have for its kind.

What a waste of space.

The anger welled up inside her almost automatically. Where was the point? Dead was dead. Crying over them was not going to bring them back. Carving out a memorial and supplying offerings was not going to magically resurrect them. Their souls had probably already returned to the Well. All that was left of humanity—except for the group she had shuttled away to Sanctuary—were walking corpses—hell spawn and wicked and members of the swarm.

What was the _point_?

“Fury?”

The voice came from her right and Fury set her fingers on Scorn even as she turned around. She recognized the voice, but that did not mean much. There were many creatures in the universe that could conceal their true nature through glamors and illusions. As a matter of fact, one of her brothers had been a true natural at it.

 _Is_ , something in her mind suddenly snapped at her. _He still is. Strife’s alive. You know it._

Fury frowned. She _hoped_ he was still alive. She still had more than enough reason to punch him in the face half a dozen times.

“Kanda.” It looked like Kanda at least. Her hair was much longer now than when Fury had first rescued her from the Nether and her face looked much less tired, but aside from that, it was very clearly her. More importantly, Fury could not detect any unnatural flows of energy around her.

Well, except for the candle in her hands.

“Didn’t expect to see you here. Of all people.” The smile that hushed over Kanda’s face was as nervous as it was fake. Fury barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Humans and their... social antics. “You look... upset. Is everything okay?”

 _No._ No it really was not, but at the very least the humans were getting better at getting directly to the point with her. Gone were the days when they would tremble like leaves in the wind at the mere idea of talking to her or—Creator forbid—asking anything of her.

On one hand, good. On the other, frustrating.

“You do know this is useless, right?” There was a teeny, tiny part of her mind that shouted ‘abort’, ‘shut up’ and ‘stop talking right now’. It was utterly drowned out by the frustration that once more welled up inside of her. “The candles, the flowers, the inscription... None of this is going to bring them back! The last ninety days may have been quiet, but there is no telling how long this silence will last. You should be spending that time learning how to get stronger, not crying over a past you can’t change!”

“Oh I’m sorry,” Kanda sneered. “I’m guessing nephilim memorial services were five-minute affairs right after battle. What did _your_ people do to honor the dead? Slaughter another planet?”

“Well, for one we didn’t cling to useless iconography,” Fury snapped back. She remembered now. She remembered where she had seen those five symbols before. “Great lot of good all your praying and your pathetic sentimentality did for your species when the Apocalypse happened!”

It had been just a little too much too soon. Fury could tell the moment the words had left her mouth. She had expected anger. She had expected tears.

Instead, Kanda stood, firm and yet shaking like a volcano just shy of exploding. Her fingers clutched the candle hard enough to crack the glass.

“Get out.”

“What?”

“GET OUT!”

The shout pierced through the silence of the fog like a shot from Strife’s Redemption. Its echoes were swallowed by the weather, but the rustling and screeching as every bird within a twenty foot radius escaped their perch to escape the noise was unmistakable. It stood in frightening contrast to the unmoving mask of sheer and utter loathing that was Kanda’s face.

“Take your fucking horse and get out of here! God knows you never wanted to come here with us in the first place, so just call your goddamn horse and leave already!”

“My...”

Fury turned on her heels and left.

***

clack ... clack ... click ... clack ... clack ... click ...

_This is silly. This is stupid. You are better than this. Get a grip, Fury._

She kept repeating the mantra in her head with every step, but it barely seemed to help. It made her angry and that was good—anger was familiar and almost comforting, but it did nothing to banish the thoughts. It never did.

She had been so good at it! She had spent ninety days resolutely ignoring the fact that she was stuck here. She had successfully ignored that she was trapped. She had even started to enjoy patrol. And ever since the humans had started figuring out how to use magic, she had even received a chance of a few admittedly horribly imbalanced sparring sessions here and there. She had been so good at banishing the thought...

And all it had taken was one comment from Kanda to bring it all right back into the forefront of her brain.

Rampage was dead.

It hurt. It hurt like few things ever had and Fury had been through a lot. Whoever had said that time healed all wounds had clearly either not lived or suffered long enough. Fury was just waiting for the chance to strangle the first fool who’d try to lob this ‘advice’ at her.

It felt like part of her had been ripped straight from her soul and for the last ten days, she had barely been able to banish the agonizing feeling from her mind every now and then.

It was this part of patrol that was the worst and that was another thing that infuriated her. She had always enjoyed this tower the most, for its solitude. Now, with the monument there and the memory of her conversation with Kanda firmly in her mind, she had come to dread the balcony of the Midnight Tower.

 _Get a grip,_ Fury snapped at her own mind as she stepped out onto the balcony. She could do this. One quick round and she could move on from this wretched place.

The monument was still there, of course, as if to mock her attempts at ignoring her pain. As a matter of fact, the arrangement of flowers and candles at its feet had only grown, to the point where Fury was starting to wonder if it could be seen from one of the distant islands at night. The candles burned seemingly eternal.

She wanted to throw them into the sea. The urge was almost ridiculous its intensity. She wanted to pick up every single one of the damn lights and throw them into the waves, watch them sink. She wanted to stomp the stupid flowers into a white and purple paste. She wanted to take her whip to the cursed stone and turn it into gravel.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Fury sighed as she turned around. _Splendid._ Now she didn’t even have the blessing of solitude anymore. _Fantastic_.

“If you touch any part of that memorial, you’re going to regret it.”

Fury laughed. “Like any one of you weaklings could actually hurt me! You could come at me all at once and you’d be dead in seconds.”

“True.” On one of the benches at the edge of the balcony, Gloria took a sip from her cup of tea and shifted her weight. “But what exactly makes you think that we’d be angry with you?”

What kind of idiotic question was that? Was this a set-up?

Fury shrugged. “It’s a memorial. Most species in the universe become rather irate when you destroy monuments to their dead.”

“Well, we wouldn’t like it,” Gloria admitted. “Lewis put a lot of work into that. He’d have to do it all over. But—hey—if that’s how nephilim grieve, we’d be neither surprised nor angry.”

“I’m _not_ grieving.”

“Uh-huh.”

Any second now, Gloria was going to break out into roaring laughter. Fury was sure of it. Either that, or some boring, long-winded explanation about the nature of the soul and the mind. She could tell from the way her eye brows kept climbing higher on her forehead.

Well, Fury for one was not going to wait around for that. She squared her shoulders, turned towards the exit, and marched off.

She almost made it to the doorway leading back into the halls. Almost.

“Just, have a look at the bottom of the stone before you go, will ya?”

Fury sighed. It was a trick, of course. She knew that. She also knew she’d never hear the end of ‘did you look at the memorial yet’, if she didn’t do it now. Maybe not from Gloria. Definitely from Ashley, the hopeless, clueless, sentimental brat. Possibly from all the rest. Was that really worth the aggravation?

Fury turned back around and walked over to the memorial once more. There, at the bottom of the stone, the symbols were still neatly lined up. The fish, the star, the moon, the wheel, the circle—

And a stylized horse head.

Fury reached for the amulet Ulthane had given to her—‘Rider’s Mercy’ he had called it—almost automatically. The resemblance was there, even if the maker’s work was naturally far more detailed and polished.

It left her utterly baffled.

“What—? Why—?” She shook her head. “You don’t even know _what_ I lost!”

“No,” Gloria sighed, “but we can all tell that you lost _something_ , Fury. And memorials are not just tributes to those we have lost—they also help us process our own grief, give us a place to mourn without fear that people will call us pathetic. Or sentimental.”

 _Like I did to Kanda_ , Fury wanted to ask, but it was a pointless question. That was exactly where this conversation was going. Any minute now, Gloria was going to demand an apology. A ridiculous notion.

“Like it or not, Fury, this is the spot we have picked as our designated place of mourning, here in Sanctuary.” Gloria shrugged. “And like it or not, but you are part of this community. You have as much right to use this place as any one of us. Any time you like.”

She wanted to say something. She probably should have. Instead, Fury stood, waiting as the slight breeze from the sea rustled through the leaves of the tree, waiting for the part where all of this was a massive joke.

It took her a solid minute to realize that it wasn’t.

 _Part of this community_... The thought tasted utterly bitter and deceptively sweet at the same time. When was the last time she had been part of any sort of community? Could you call it a community, if it was just you and your horse, with your brothers and theirs on another distant world, years away from yours? Or did she have to go even further back than that? How long had it been, since she had been part of the nephilim? Since her people had been whole? She had forgotten to keep track of the millennia somewhere down the line.

But she had never forgotten what it had felt like. To have brothers. To have sisters. A community. The nephilim may never have had a home, but even in their worst hours, they had had each other. Back then, she had hated it, had felt drowned and suffocated in the crowd all at the same time.

Back then.

“So...” Fury ground her teeth. “Whom are you mourning, then?” She nodded towards Gloria. “The unborn brat’s father?”

Gloria laughed. What exactly the joke was, Fury did not know, but it had Gloria doubling over on her bench with her arms crossed in front of her belly. “Dear god, no. I’m just here for the peace and quiet.”

Fury rolled her eyes and turned to leave.

Perhaps humans and nephilim were very much alike in some things after all.


End file.
